Thursday, February 14, 2008
The real enemy
For those of you into the soap operish aspects of the Bolivarian project today the governor of the state of Miranda and a close confidant of Chavez, Diosdado Cabello, came out and denounced National Assembly deputy Luis Tascon as being an "agent of the empire". In an even more bizarre twist he claims Tascon went over to the dark side during a visit with Bill Gates where he had a chip implanted in him.
Funny, and for years now the opposition has been trying to convince us that Luis Tascon is the Venezuelan face of "fascism" because he hosted a data base to identify bogus signatures.
I dare say all this is starting to get a little confusing.
More worrisome for this blogger, he went on to say that the "false left is the real enemy of the revolution".
But of course, the real enemies aren't those who overthrew the government in 2002, nor those who shut down the oil industry, nor the NGOs funded by the U.S. government and definitely not those who spend their time shopping in Miami with cheap Cadivi dollars.
No, the real enemy are those in the PSUV who don't toe the party line. Or maybe anyone who says anything that is contradicts anything said on Alo Presidente.
Not good.
UPDATE
This deserves another point. I think this is a demonstration of what happens when you have movements that are just led by one person or a small clique without grassroots democracy. The base can't play one of its important roles - weeding out the loons. That is probably why Chavismo is full of them right now.
As I have pointed out before the Venezuelan Constitution specifies that all candidates for office need to be chosen through internal elections - ie primaries. Yet not a single political party in Venezuela that I am aware of does that. Interestingly, this is one breach of the Constitution that the opposition never complains about - which just goes to show that for all their bemoaning Chavez's "autocratic" tendencies most of them aren't any different.
Personally, I am at the point where if I could vote in Venezuelan elections I would refuse to vote for any political party whose candidates were not chosen through a democratic selection process where the base of the party selects the candidate - even if it meant I had to stay home and not vote for anyone as would likely be the case.
|
Funny, and for years now the opposition has been trying to convince us that Luis Tascon is the Venezuelan face of "fascism" because he hosted a data base to identify bogus signatures.
I dare say all this is starting to get a little confusing.
More worrisome for this blogger, he went on to say that the "false left is the real enemy of the revolution".
But of course, the real enemies aren't those who overthrew the government in 2002, nor those who shut down the oil industry, nor the NGOs funded by the U.S. government and definitely not those who spend their time shopping in Miami with cheap Cadivi dollars.
No, the real enemy are those in the PSUV who don't toe the party line. Or maybe anyone who says anything that is contradicts anything said on Alo Presidente.
Not good.
UPDATE
This deserves another point. I think this is a demonstration of what happens when you have movements that are just led by one person or a small clique without grassroots democracy. The base can't play one of its important roles - weeding out the loons. That is probably why Chavismo is full of them right now.
As I have pointed out before the Venezuelan Constitution specifies that all candidates for office need to be chosen through internal elections - ie primaries. Yet not a single political party in Venezuela that I am aware of does that. Interestingly, this is one breach of the Constitution that the opposition never complains about - which just goes to show that for all their bemoaning Chavez's "autocratic" tendencies most of them aren't any different.
Personally, I am at the point where if I could vote in Venezuelan elections I would refuse to vote for any political party whose candidates were not chosen through a democratic selection process where the base of the party selects the candidate - even if it meant I had to stay home and not vote for anyone as would likely be the case.
|
